


Tell Me I'm Your National Anthem

by Lanskys



Category: Sons of Anarchy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-24 19:00:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22002868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lanskys/pseuds/Lanskys
Summary: Jax dies, Tara tries to find ways to cope.
Relationships: Tara Knowles/Chibs Telford, Tara Knowles/Jax Teller, Tara Knowles/Tig Trager
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	Tell Me I'm Your National Anthem

The church ceremony is long, boring. 

The people around her, the music of the organ, the numbing sweet smell of burnt wax and heavy perfume, it's too much. It makes Tara sick, and for a long moment she's tempted to throw over the benches and knock down the altar, to rip the Sons of Anarchy patch off of his coffin.

Jax, her Jax, killed like a dog in the street; she closes her eyes against the sting of tears. 

She lets herself be captured by the sleepy whisper of her surroundings as she rocks Thomas in her arms, tuning out the clattering of the incense burner hanging from its support, the distant echo of muffled crying.

She is grateful when they arrive at the cemetery. The priest clears his throat, flips the pages in his small black book and begins to read the final prayers. All the men remove their hats, and at the front of the crowd Tara bows her head.

Suddenly, someone's hand closes around her arm: Gemma.

Tara locks her elbow through Gemma's and watches as his coffin is lowered into the dirt; a small dark shape swallowed by the earth.  
+  
“He would've wanted you to have it,” Chibs says to her one day, pushing a black sweatshirt into her hands. It's been almost three weeks since the funeral when she finally gains the courage to go by the clubhouse.

Tara brings the sweatshirt to her face and inhales; it smells like him: tobacco and whiskey and gunpowder. 

The familiar sting of tears burns at her eyes and she brings her hand to her mouth, her teeth scraping diamond and gold. She puts the hoodie down on the bar and blinks hard, refusing to cry in front of Chibs. She will cry, later. But not in front of one of the Sons.  
+  
They always say the laugh’s the first thing to go, but she remembers that just fine, she thinks she’s got it right. It's the shape of his hands flat on the table, the focus of his eyes watching her: these fade into sepia, into time, into a place delineated away from what is now.

The print of his hands on her hips faded what feels like a thousand years ago. She presses her own palms against bare skin at night, tries to remember.

Don’t think about the empty spaces, she tells herself.  
+  
Another week passes, she leaves the kids with Unser, and Tig starts his bike up with the clock reading ten to six, and Tara saying drive until I tell you to stop. And that’s exactly what he does. The sun has just begun to set behind them, a clear blue sky fading into hues of red and orange. They pull over, once, to get gas and half-decent burgers that he watches her pick at. 

“You know I won’t press you, but if you decide you need to talk I’ll listen. Whenever you want, doc.”

She smiles, thin and pale. “Let’s keep going.”  
+  
The vacancy sign outside the motel flickers ominously as Tig and Tara pull in. He checks in while she waits in the car. 

“Got a double,” he tells her as he unlocks the door, and he sees her look over at him, but she doesn't say anything.

She follows him in, tossing her purse down on the desk and kicking her shoes off. Her clothes stick to her in the stifling August heat—sweat beading down the crook of her back.

Tig stands a few paces away, watching her like he has a question he's not sure if he should ask.

“Go ahead,” Tara tells him, crossing her arms and leaning back against the edge of the desk.

“Don't get me wrong, doll, I enjoy spending time with you, you know, anything for Jax's girl,” Tara flinches at the name, but Tig continues, “But you and me ain't never been particularly close. And now this road trip out of the blue? Where are we going? What is it you're not telling me?”

“I can't stay in Charming,” she says, “And I just...can't be alone right now.”

“You should be at home, Tara.”

“Charming is not my home, Tig. I don’t have a home anymore.”

“Sure you do. Gotta nice little family, two beautiful sons, warm food in your belly. A home that doesn’t move with you.”

“I don't want to stay in the place that killed my husband, Tig. The place that tore my family apart. The place that will kill my children." She feels a lump rise in her throat, but she bites back the sting of tears. "Don't you get it? That's what Charming does; destroys everything it touches. God help anyone who tries to live a happy life in that town.”

“I get your frustration, trust me, I do,” Tig moves in closer, hooking his thumbs through the belt loops on the front of his jeans.

Tara shifts at the proximity, backing up further against the desk, but she doesn’t lower her eyes from his. He isn't like the others, he isn't careful around her, second guessing every move he makes as if she’ll break when he touches her. He treats her like he knows she can handle herself—and she thinks that might just be the kindest thing he's ever done for her.

“He loved you very much, you know.”

“He loved me,” she says, laughing, “Yeah, I know. But not enough to leave before he—,”—she breaks, stumbles forward, and he catches her.

His eyes are serious now, “You okay, doc?”

He knows better than to ask that.

She looks up at him with damp, red-rimmed eyes, and thinks she could kiss him right then and there. She could kiss him, it’s dark and his eyes are full and her fingers are on his forearms.

She doesn’t kiss him. She does lean forward into his embrace, she does let the curve of her lips brush against his neck a little and savors in the quick shudder it produces from him. His thumb brushes skin, and she thinks she might shiver but she doesn't, she is soft to the touch and very still.

Tig isn’t necessarily handsome, not like her husband’s fine features, or even Juice’s good homespun looks—he doesn’t have the kind of face that would normally turn her head. It's plain and dark, with a large nose and bright blue eyes. The age around those eyes tells her he’s seen things, things that become secrets after a while. He’s layers through and through, all different kinds of man wrapped up in one. But somehow it works for him. And he knows it too. Tara was fifteen the first time she saw him, she and her father saw him leaving the police station one day in town, he was with Clay. Her father caught her looking, told her “You stay away from those men. They're bad business. No good’ll come from mixing up with them.”

Well, it's too late for that, she thinks.

“Tara—” 

She silently fists her hand in the front of his shirt, “What're you doing?” Tig manages to ask, but he doesn't move away and she doesn't let go.

She steps in closer, leans up to kiss him, but hovers there for a beat, her breathing as ragged as his. She's not sure what she's waiting for. Maybe she's waiting for some sort of sign from above that she shouldn't do this. 

It doesn't come.

She pulls his face down to hers, her lips insistent. Not entirely sure what’s happening, he kisses her back softly, one hand braced against her hip, the other on the edge of the desk behind her. She opens her lips against his and he leans heavily into the line of her body. 

Her kiss isn't kind, or soft, or consoling, it's all teeth and anger. And what surprises her is that he doesn't pull away. He meets every kiss with an equal amount of urgency, tangling one hand in her hair. Her shirt crumples under his touch as he tries to mold her shape into his. 

Then, finally, he draws away to look at her. Tara is flushed red—staring at his shirt and smoothing it out with the spread of her fingers. She had brought him here with these intentions, but she wasn't quite sure she could really go through with it. Chibs had been her first choice, the two of them had always been relatively closer, but he was too noble, too loyal to Jax, even in death. He might bring back all the old shit that she needed to stay buried.

“Doc,” he says, and she looks up at him, thinking he'll finish that sentence, but he doesn't, he just lets his forehead linger against hers as his thumbs make sensitive friction-tracks on her arms.

Finally he says, “What do you need from me?” 

His face doesn't betray any emotion, but she feels his hands tense where they rest. And though his mouth is drawn tight, she knows he needs this, almost as much as she does.

“Don't let me think about him.”

Tig kisses her, tastes the bitter remnants of tears and whiskey.

Tara moves her hands down his chest and lower still, she presses in close against the rigid length of his cock. 

“Jesus Christ,” he hisses. He lifts her up and holds her steady, cupping her ass, as he backs them up.

He feels the foot of bed hit the back of his legs and then he's toppling onto the mattress, Tara on top of him. 

The loud roar of a motorcycle passing by breaks through their quietude. Tig's hands stop where they are and she holds her breath, face turned away to watch the door. They wait there together, his eyes fixed on her lips, the twisting curve of her neck. She waits for the door to open, for them to be caught—she waits for what isn't here. (What isn't here? Him).

When she's certain that no one is coming she turns back to him.

“Shit. Tara. We can’t do this,” he says, voice flat as the lie. 

“Why not?” Her voice is cold, but he can hear it quivering. “He's gone, Tig.” He flinches at her comment. “He's not coming back.”

He pauses for a long moment and then runs his thumb along her jaw, “I know, doll. I know.” He tilts her head back until her throat is bared to him and kisses gently at her pulse, Tara clutches at his kutte and pushes it off his shoulders along with his shirt.

Shakily, Tara gets to her feet on the bed, legs on either side of him, and shimmies out of her jeans and underwear at once.

“C'mere,” he slurs because its the only word he can manage. She slowly lowers herself to her knees, reclaiming her spot in his lap. He can feel damp heat, so close against him.

He rolls them over and teases at the hem of the shirt before pulling it off of her body and tossing it blindly into the room. “Always did think you was prettier than any girl I’d ever seen,” he mumbles, almost to himself, as his hand traces slowly down her torso, slow, smooth movements that halt when he reaches the valley between her hips. 

The room itself is dimly light, almost completely dark, but the neon lights are shining through the curtains and reflecting in her hair as she arches upward for him to unhook her bra. He drops it beside the bed and his hands connect with her skin again, first at her waist, then up to her breasts, and she sucks in a sharp breath at the feel of his calloused hands on her, bites down on her bottom lip, plush and soft beneath her tongue. 

Her own hands tremble as they find their way down his bared muscles, deft fingers quickly undoing his belt and zipper. His kicks his jeans and shoes off and she braces a hand against his neck, his knee parting her thighs.

Tig spits into his palm and runs it along his length before he pushes into her slowly, excruciatingly slow, her warm body writhing beneath his. It’s almost too dark to see now, but she kisses bare hot skin until she finds his mouth, he tastes like ash and heat. 

He gives a sharp intake of breath and hitches her knee up to his hip, thrusting faster, harder. His body moves over hers, she can feel a primal desire rise from within her chest. The sound she makes trembles with need. 

Finding her balance, she draws herself up toward his touch. He leans back and she moves forward, pushing him onto his back.

He looks up, dazed and hungry and drunk off of her, his fingers drifting up her stomach, her breasts, her throat, her jaw. She can hear him murmuring, yes and baby baby, and Tara, her name tumbling from his lips, half out of breath.

He sits upright and for a moment, she looks over his shoulder, catches sight of their reflection on the tiny motel TV, and feels a sharp jolt of guilt and disbelief run through her. What would he have to say about this?

Nothing; he's dead. 

Gone. 

Buried.

Tig bends in toward her so she pulls, her teeth catching his bottom lip and biting until she can feel blood edging against her teeth. There's so much blood between the two of them, blood on his hands, on hers, a shared knowledge and history; her vision is blurry and wet, so she closes her eyes. 

Closes her eyes, and pretends it's him. Where Jax was slow rhythm, Tig is harsh vigor. They don't feel the same, but it'll have to do. They smell almost the same and then Tig moans just right, hits just the right octave, and they nearly sound the same, too.

She clenches her thighs against his hips, and rocks back against him, the silence in the room now replaced with the sound of their panting, skin against skin, the cheap bed sagging and creaking beneath them. Unsteady fingers press against her clit, and she moves down against him and back up again – quick motions, one, two, three—and then her body goes taut.

She comes soundlessly, mouth gasping for air—it's pleasure and pain all rolled into one. His arms keep her grounded as his face falls forward against her shoulder, a face full of hair to muffle the noise he makes.

For a brief moment she forgets about Jax, forgets about the town and bleak sunless days and the MC, doesn't know anything but this, blinding pleasure and release. 

The world outside of them feels foggy and unreal as she collapses onto the bed. Aftershock shivers through her body, an awful sickly sweet warmth bathing her whole body. Tig rolls over onto his back, her thigh sticking to his.

Tara looks over at him. His eyes glint in the dark, satisfied, and he leans in, kisses the column of her throat—that’s all she really needs. All she needs from him.

They stare at each other for just one moment: knowing.

There are tears in her eyes, she realizes.

There are tears and they are on the brink of spilling.

Tig looks down first.  
+  
They're silent on the drive back the next morning.

“Anything you need?” he asks when she climbs off the back of his bike, hands him his helmet.

She shakes her head, studies him, the crease of a smile begins at the corner of her mouth and then she turns and goes inside.  
+  
Think of Jax in happier times, people tell her. All she sees when she closes her eyes is him, alive or dead, and she's never sure which is worse.

She almost regrets, now, calling poor Bobby to her house to hear what had happened in all its sordid detail. She nearly vomits to think of it: Jax, face down in the street. Stabbed through a dozen times or more, her husband's handsome face hardly recognizable. Bobby didn't soften it for her and she didn't ask him to.

But the image haunts her.

There have been so many deaths she thinks she could drown with the weight of them all.

Another man dead in her name, her husband offering up another corpse at her feet for the sake of her honor, his vanity, their love–-their love above all else; and look at where it has gotten them both.

Tara pulls the blankets closer and tries again to sleep without much hope of success.  
+  
Work, work, work. She takes on more shifts at the hospital. It is a burden, but she welcomes the distraction.

She finds the strength to go to TM more and more often. To help Gemma cook or to talk with Bobby or to feign interest in working on cars. 

Gemma borrows the car to go to the grocery store with the boys, and she waits in the office with Juice, fiddling absently with some manila folders.

Juice is nervous around her but well-meaning; whatever he thought of her husband (and she was never quite sure, in his case, but anyone who appreciated their own continued good health was at least a little wary of Jax and that, at least, she will respect), he feels for her in her hour of grief. He sits across from her, smiling occasionally in a painful sort of way; she cannot smile back, cannot let her mask crack for fear of crumbling all over again, but she nods in acknowledgment.

“You know, Gemma might be a while—I'd offer you a ride home, but I'm closing up shop tonight--”

“I could give you a lift,” Chibs offers, appearing in the doorframe and wiping grease off of his hands with a rag.

She pauses, weighing her options, “Okay, okay yeah, just let me grab my things.”  
+  
On the drive back, he takes the long way home, but she doesn't protest. She tries to keep the conversation light, but there is rather a lot of silence to cover.

Suddenly, Chibs is pulling over to the side of the road.

“What are you doing?” she looks over her shoulder at the empty road behind them. “What's wrong?” The landscape outside is barren, a sea of gold and brown, with a strip of dark road stretching narrowly in front of them, no end in sight. “Are you going to kill me?” she asks half-jokingly. She's asked something like this before.

He laughs and shakes his head, “No, love. I just want to talk to you for a minute. See how you are—how you really are.”

“I'm doing fine.” She shifts in her seat, suddenly feeling trapped in the car. “Things are...fine.”

He doesn't say anything, but he looks at her with a terrible clarity that leaves her feeling seen to the heart.

“I need some air,” she says, opening the car door and stepping out into the heat. She doesn't turn and look, but she hears Chibs do the same.

She feels conspicuously bare so she crosses her arms over her chest. Tongue-tied, she scrambles for something to say. She won't ask him about it, about him, the "how could you let that happen" that never quite makes it out of her mouth.

"I'm going to be honest, Tara. Tig told me what happened.”

She splutters involuntarily, “I'm sorry, he what? What did he say?”

“It's not really any of my business. If you're looking for comfort, Tara, why didn't you say anything? The club is always here to help you out.” Chibs is openly watching her face for any reaction and for a moment she looks shockingly vulnerable and barely grown.

“Please, Filip,” she says, her voice sounding odd and brittle to her own ears, “you don’t have to pretend to be chivalrous to me.”

“Tara,” he says. He looks as though she’s slapped him. She looks at him and for the briefest instant she sees Jax, the weight of memory and knowledge of Jackson Teller is almost physically overwhelming to her. She leans against the car and rubs a hand over her forehead.

“Why did you offer me a ride?”

“You needed one,” he says simply.

“Yes.”

He’s watching her. The silence stretches between them.

“You should have someone to talk to about him,” he says, and she folds her arms tight across her chest, control yourself, she thinks, straightening her spine.

“I wouldn’t even be in this situation,” she replies, “if you’d kept my husband alive.”

There’s silence. It prickles horribly, and she waits again: for the gauntlet to be picked up, for a reason, for something. Anything.

“Jax got himself killed. You know, and I know, that no one could keep him from doing what he was determined to do. This isn't anyone's fault, Tara—”

The space between them takes less than two steps to cross, and she slaps him. Hard.

It is only when her hand has cracked against his cheek that he catches her. He could have—before. She is not so naive as to believe otherwise. Her palm stings and it is an allowance and she wants to hit him again, to hit and to tear and to shoot straight. His fingers are tight against the bone of her wrist.

“What do you want me to say?” he asks, and his voice is impossibly calm. “I'm sorry. I wish I could've done something, but I can't go back.”

She can feel her blood running high, spotting up in her cheeks, and she bites the inside of them, trying to cool the rush of it. “You should've helped him leave Charming, you selfish asshole. He trusted you, respected your opinion. You were supposed to have his back.”

His fingers tighten just one increment closer, but she holds herself together and nearly shakes with it.

“Jax loved Charming, he loved the club.”

“Yes, and he would have chosen them before me,” she replies and—

Chibs's fingers relax when he realizes it is, of all things, a question. She wonders what kind of woman she is for asking this, what kind of woman she is for wishing she had made Jax choose?

He shakes his head.

You of all people should know better.

They both know better.

He drops her wrist. She stares at him; she will not cry. 

She presses herself into his unopened, unoffered arms, and kisses him. 

Any man would kiss her back, and this one does. 

The kiss he gives her is gentle, terrible in its gentleness.

The motel with Tig—was one thing. There under the neon lights, desperate and scared and grieving, wringing out a painful climax with the memory of Jax fresh in her mind and the unremitting savagery of his death. It had been sweet, in a way. She had been lost, in a way.

But this--

He feels her mouth freeze against his, her body coiling tight enough to snap. He pulls away slowly and she catches his chin with her thumb, tilts his face down to look at her.

“I’m not Jax,” he says, and the air between them seems, ever so slightly, to thin. For a moment, they feel the loss hanging in the air like a ghost, and watching. Chibs’s look is wary and brittle, as it ever is with Jax, as it ever was with Jax; that much has not changed. The shape Jax takes up is still taken up.

No matter how many times she does this—no matter how close she feels to Jax when one of the Sons is with her—he is never coming back. The knowledge rears its ugly head and she turns away from Chibs, out of his grasp. 

For a moment, she sits on the hood of the car. She looks past him, up at the sky. So blank it doesn't seem real. She breathes in, then out, slow.

She opens her eyes as a bird of prey flies overhead, wings flapping before it slides smooth across a backdrop of blue and white. 

“He did love you, you know.”

She stays silent.

When she smiles there is no joy behind it, only a baring of her teeth, “Why does everyone keeping saying that? Like it makes it any better. I'm painfully aware he loved me, thank you.”

“Would it matter if I told you I'm sorry?”

Tara bites down on her lip, she bites down the name neither one of them can bear to hear.

Tears come to her eyes and she lets them fall. She grasps at the hood of the car to steady herself. She can’t answer him--there is nothing to say. What does it matter that he's sorry, that any of them are, what possible good would that do?

“Are you going to be alright?”

“You should know.”

“No, then. Not for a while.”


End file.
